Since Sept. 11, 2001 there has been constant public reference to concepts of terror, war, and security, but little debate about their meaning and the voices of women and girls have been conspicuously absent from the discussion.

Just after the liberation of Basra, as I stared at my TV watching the British military commander appoint clerics to help to run Iraq’s second-largest city, I realised that there was something familiar about it all ...